


look in my eyes and take my hand

by krautrock



Category: Rammstein
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Vampire, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-15
Updated: 2012-06-15
Packaged: 2018-01-11 04:21:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1168620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/krautrock/pseuds/krautrock
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Paul is an aspiring hunter who lives with his grandparents in a village saddened by the absence of its benefactor, a mysterious nobleman. Now, years later, he returns, and he is not alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	look in my eyes and take my hand

**Author's Note:**

> This was supposed to be a full-length Richard/Paul vampireverse fanfic encompassing their adolescence and adult life, but has basically never been updated because I lost contact with my fandom friends and dropped out of it.  
> 

Rosenburg castle had been abandoned for as long as most people could remember. Elders of the nearby village, which shared its name with the castle, were always overcome with sudden nostalgia when their grandchildren inquired about the Gothic pinnacles and ogival windows that seemed to scratch God’s skies atop the highest of the blackened mountains that surrounded the valley and protected the village. Over sixty years had passed since the Count and his personal court had moved far to the East, and since then, the once thriving, joyful little village had turned grey and quiet, or at least the people had.

‘’Count Cezar Klossner was a strange man.’’ said an old lady, lovingly preparing tea in a copper samovar, hand painted with baroque flowers and very eye-catching, not only because of its delicate beauty, but because of how simple the kitchen was in comparison. She poured a strong cup for herself, with a slice of lemon and fresh spearmint, and set it aside. Taking a smaller cup into her thin, leathery hand, she poured a little bit of tea into it, and then a generous amount of hot water, and gave it to the child sitting across the table, sliding him a plate of strawberry jam as well. ‘’He never left the castle during the day, but he’d show up during our holidays, when the bonfires burned deep into the night and the people forgot to sleep. Everything you see… The houses, the well, the fields… It all came from his pocket. We respected him, and owe him everything we have, even though we’re free of his taxes now. He was quite unhappy. No matter how much he wanted to, he never had children of his own.’’ She gestured with her cup towards a man sitting near the fireplace treating a piece of animal skin, absorbed in his work. ‘’You’re not old enough to know this, but when you reach a certain age, you start feeling the need to leave descendants.’’ The child looked puzzled.

‘’But having children is so easy! Didn’t he have a wife?’’ The grandmother laughed gently at his display of innocence.

‘’People say he wasn’t fond of women. That’s all I know.’’ She stayed silent until she finished her tea, and then continued, almost whispering. ‘’I also know that I miss him.’’ Looking up behind her grandchild, she gazed longingly at the framed engraving hanging on the wall above the oven.  ‘’That’s him.’’

Paul turned his head to look at the portrait he had somehow ignored for so long. It was an obviously idealized representation, most of the lines in his face seemed too perfect and average, the way interesting people are never built, but something told him that the very light eyes, square chin and jet black hair were faithful. He sipped lazily at his tea, occasionally plopping a hefty spoonful of jam into his mouth. That night, he dreamt of the nostalgic Count that made his grandmother sigh.

The next day, the thirteen year old left the house early. He sanded the recent splinters in his bow, still made of simple wood, which he didn’t mind much, because he knew that as soon as he became an adult, he would be given one like the village’s hunters had, detailed in silver with the Moon Clan’s arms engraved on the handle. After finishing his task, he threw the bow and its inseparable companion, the quiver, on his back and kissed his grandparents on the cheek. Neither bothered to ask where he was going, it was common for him to run into the forest to practice his archery. He sometimes brought home an animal, and seemed proud of it, except when he would accidentally hit a squirrel or a small bird, too small for a meal and therefore a terrible waste of life; then, they’d have to stay silent and heartbroken, listening to him cry and beg for forgiveness in his little room in the attic. It was necessary. Paul was the first candidate to be accepted to the prestigious clan of hunters that named themselves after the moon itself in ten years. No other boy in the village had similar luck or skill, and since hunting was a lucrative opportunity, they encouraged him to go on, as he was too frail to be taken in as an apprentice in any of the village’s workshops, and refused to promise his hand to wealthier girls. He loved the thrill of the hunt and the freedom of running or sneaking through the forest, alone with the wilderness.

This day, however, he would venture past the forest. Paul had decided to break into the abandoned castle, out of an inherent curiosity and his own love of adventure and unnecessarily breaking glass panes. The journey through the part of the woods he was familiar with was pleasant as usual, good morning mister magpie, good morning miss dormouse, good morning quiet river, stepping on noisy twigs and letting his own laughter dissipate in the air between the chirping of small birds and the sound of the virgin nature. He discovered the long abandoned path that the castle’s servants and sometimes the Count himself must have used to connect with the village. The overgrown plants had done a good job of making it almost imperceptible, but the floor was paved in stone, so Paul ventured forward, pushing the thistles and vines out of the way to avoid getting his socks caught and ripped like the village girls used to complain about.

The road seemed to go on for miles, growing increasingly more barren, even the evil weeds that grow wherever there is no good plant, and sometimes even overtaking the good plant’s habitat, had abandoned all hope of life as they approached the sad castle. Pushing past a rusted iron gate that nobody had bothered to lock, he entered the former domain of the count. The castle looked even more imposing now that he was inside it, but the mossy green on the walls calmed his senses, reminding him that this was now a place of quiet and decay, where nature could inch forward and reclaim its stolen land. He gazed around the courtyard, finding only an old wooded cart and some barrels amongst the sixty years of overgrowth. Everything was vertical and pointed, the arches in the arcades seemed to want to swallow him whole, and even the bars in the ground floor windows had sharp arrow tips all around. The front door was strongly locked, in all its three meters of wood and iron and intimidation, framed by statues Paul did not recognize, except for one, yes, one of them was familiar: Vlad the Third, son of Vlad Dracul. _Dracula_. He knew him from an old book his grandfather kept, detailing the history of the European kingdoms, and assumed the other faces were also kings and counts of bygone eras. Since the door was impenetrable, Paul decided to try his hand at climbing. He had come too far to just turn around at a closed door.

Looking around for a receptive window, he eventually found one on the first floor that he was sure he could reach if he used the bars on the lowest window. A swift jump, a lucky grab of a vine, and he was hanging from the windowsill. It was only after pushing his way past the colorful vitral that he noticed he had injured his leg in the sharp caging. There was a considerable tear on his sock, so much for avoiding those, and while not deep, the wound was bleeding quite a bit. He decided to rip out a strip of the already ruined sock as a makeshift tourniquet, ignoring the pain of torn flesh in the pure rush of adrenaline that came from knowing he was a jump away from being inside the mysterious castle. So he jumped.

He found himself in what seemed to be a dining room. Its extremely tall walls held paintings larger than the ceiling of his little room in the attic, and the parts of the walls that were not covered by the gigantic frames, as well as the wall behind Paul, that was bare of paintings because of the necessity of the enormous windows, revealed a beautiful floral pattern dominated by red and gold. The paintings seemed to depict a sequence, starting with the one above the baroquely sculpted fireplace and ending with the painting that hung behind a dust-covered grand piano. It was a war story. The main character, a man with long black hair and a mustache was first depicted as a prince, fighting alongside his father, then his coronation ceremony, the painting directly in front of Paul’s eyes, hanging above the room’s largest door, next to it a painting of a belic victory, the newly crowned king standing victorious on a field of dead enemies. The last painting, the one serving as background to the sinister piano, made Paul’s heart skip a beat. A mass of bodies, impaled with extreme prejudice in front of a silhouetted castle. The detail and sheer size of such monstrous carnage was impressive to say the least. Whoever lived in this castle enjoyed this sight enough to eat and listen to music near it. He walked further into the room, to admire the golden candlesticks that adorned the long wooden table. No effort had been made to save these valuable items; it was as if the Count was planning to return. It also showed that he knew the villagers would not dare to break into his domain. Paul suddenly felt a terrible fear inside his little heart, as if the Count was inside the room, angrily staring down at the intruder. He had a sinking feeling that this had been a terrible idea he would live to regret.

As the small boy jumped back down from the window, a bat flew down from its hiding place among the candelabra and made its way towards the East.

Paul made his way back to the village limping from both fear and the pain in his leg. That night, he did not dream of the Count or his son, but of the dead bodies in that accursed oil painting. He had never slept so badly in his life.

 

* * *

 

‘’ _But in the corner, at the cold hour of dawn, sat the poor girl, with rosy cheeks and with a smiling mouth, leaning against the wall--frozen to death on the last evening of the old year._ ’’

The carriage jumped slightly, encountering a stone upon the path but the horses took no notice of their passengers’ discomfort and kept their steady, dutiful pace along the country road. Inside, a man held open a large book covered in leather, its gold foil decorations shining blindingly by the oil lamps. Sitting on a red velvet seat, he recited to a sleepy young boy sitting across him with eyes as clear as daylight. The boy’s face twisted at this last sentence. Big limpid tears ran down his cheeks and his lip quivered, stifling a long whine. He wanted to hear the rest.

‘ _’Stiff and stark sat the child there with her matches, of which one bundle had been burnt. "She wanted to warm herself," people said. No one had the slightest suspicion of what beautiful things she had seen; no one even dreamed of the splendor in which, with her grandmother she had entered on the joys of a new year._ ’’ The man signaled that the story was over by loudly closing the tome. ‘’Why are you crying?’’

The boy took some time to compose himself enough to speak. His sleeves were soaked with tears and his voice came out only as a whimper for long moments.

‘’S-she died! She was just a little girl-‘’ he finally broke down sobbing ‘’why did she have to die like that?’’

Count Cezar sighed. His son was the one insisting on hearing a fairy tale every night, but he was often not prepared for the sad endings. As a vampire, he would soon be expected to accept the fact that humans are, in fact, mortal, fragile little things that last only a few years before expiring softly, or not so much, and having their flesh eaten by the same waiting earth that created them, living on in the flowers that bloom above them. It was so much crueler not being able to die. The child was much too young to know this, but it was not this feeling that made him cry the most.

‘’Nobody loved her… She lost her grandmother! Her father treated her so badly… What did she do to deserve such a thing?’’ the child looked up at his father ‘’I don’t ever want to be alone… I don’t want to be unloved! ‘’ he let himself fall over gently to the side onto the pillow-covered seat.

‘’Richard…’’ the Count started, with a voice he expected showed his honesty ‘’you are the most important thing in my life. You will want for nothing, and cry for no one. Forever.’’

It was hard to hear such concerns from his own son. If Richard only knew what length he had gone to in order to have him sitting here in front of him. In order to read him fairy tales. The child’s sobbing waned soon after, and the sadness, like it often happens with children, turned into tiredness, and he fell asleep.

Suddenly, from outside, the coachman called out to the Count.

‘’We are nearing the valley, my Lord.’’ Then he added ‘’Rosenburg’s fires are still burning, I can see them in the distance.’’

The Count smiled nostalgically, feeling some imaginary warmth grow inside his cold, dead heart.


End file.
